


Swear By The Stars

by actualkoschei



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Brief references to child prostitution, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:44:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6114064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualkoschei/pseuds/actualkoschei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Fulgrim character study. Based off my headcanons for what his childhood was like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swear By The Stars

He hadn’t seen the old man since. The man had had a kindly face, the boy thought, with a bald – naturally or shaven, it was unclear – head, and a short-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, both caked with soot dust and machine grease. But he had bright eyes, a startling shade of green, and as he passed, he had slipped another ration card, such a precious thing that he could have sold for a heirloom necklace, ruby and old gold, but he had slipped it into the boy’s clenched hand without a word, nothing asked in return. The boy had eaten well that night, two pieces of bread and two bowls of thin soup, almost enough to fill his perpetually hunger-clenched belly.

But still not enough, not really. The boy was growing too fast, already taller than the men around him even as he’d only just passed his twelfth birthday the last month. The other men, they gave him strange looks. Some disapproving, others lustful, lascivious. They called him by his name now, some of them. “Fulgrim”, rather than simply “boy”.

His name spilled like a prayer from their lips when they laid their hands on him, and sounded bright-harsh as the shift-change siren when they shout, reprimanding him for working too slow, for not meeting his daily quotas. He could have met the quotas, and then some, but never seemed to want to. High above his work station, there was a gap in the factory roof. A narrow split, no wider than the span of his two palms laid together. Even so, when Fulgrim looked up at the split, he could see the sky. A smoggy swirl of layered shades of black and grey, most of the time, but still far more engaging than the plain stamped-steel parts on the assembly belt in front of him.

On some nights, the best of Fulgrim’s nights, the storms blew up over Chemos. Electrical storms, they were, fierce and wild with crackling sparks in the clouds and winds so strong they would have blown over, held down and stripped, anyone who dared step outside the hellish hot, but secure, bowels of the factories. Those same deadly winds would push the eddies of smog aside, just a little, but enough to let Fulgrim see the stars. Distant spots of light, blurred grey by the healthy filth of the atmosphere on Chemos. Even so, they made Fulgrim’s heart – hearts? He sometimes wondered if he had two, feeling the uneven quickness of his own pulse when he lay awake at night – soar high and giddy.

Out there, there is something else, something far beyond the factory grit, he knew it. Almost, sometimes, thought he can remember it. Greenish-blue light, purer than anything on Chemos, dancing off dark gold metal surfaces. And a man, old, young, ageless all at once, with dark hair and burning golden eyes. His voice surprisingly kind, Fulgrim always thought when he looked back on these memories. He could have been cruel, spoken harsh and too loud, loud enough to shatter souls, and yet he never did. “My son,” he called Fulgrim, and the mere thought of the words filled him with warmth like fresh hot soup, but deeper and better. Fulgrim had no-one, not here, not now, but in that place beyond the stars, he was loved.


End file.
